The TVNZ report is quite damning of Shane Taurima. While it clears him of political bias in his interviewing and editorial decisions (which I never thought there was a case for), the damning part is how he ran a Labour Party branch from within TVNZ for many months.

Labour has declined to give him a waiver to stand for Tamaki Makaurau. This is the right decision, as a failure to do so would have been a de facto endorsement of his activities at TVNZ. These activities were not coincidental – but designed to win him the nomination for Tamaki Makaurau.

A TVNZ meeting room was used to host a Labour Party meeting – just five weeks after the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election which he had sought the Labour candidacy for. This is quite damning, as it shows an almost immediate commencement of activities for Labour – not a gradual decision to get involved again.

Four TVNZ staff sent or received “hundreds of e-mails” from or to their TVNZ accounts, related to the Labour Party.

Taurima recruited three TVNZ staff members to join the Labour Party less than one week after the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election. The timing is daming, as well as any boss pressuring staff to join a political party – let alone staff at the state broadcaster

One staff member said she found it hard to complete her TVNZ duties due to the requests from Taurima to do Labour Party business

Taxpayers, through TVNZ, paid for someone to fly from Gisborne to Auckland to attend a Labour Party meeting at Taurma’s home

In a number of areas, the panel casts doubt on Taurima’s version of events

Less than a week after returning to TVNZ Taurima was being e-mailed about how to win Tamaki Makaurau. These e-mails do not come unsolicited.

The most damning evidence in my eyes is that he did nto set up one branch for Labour – but three branches!! I’ve been in party politics a long time, and let me tell you there is no reason you set up multiple branches – except to win a nomination. You might help set up one branch to help the party grow, You set up multiple branches to win a nomination. Taurima consistently claims he only decided to stand for Tamaki Makaurau six months later in February 2014. I do not believe he is telling the truth. All his activities from the week he returned to TVNZ were what you would expect from someone seeking a nomination – and using their employer’s resources to help gain it.

Taurima became the Electorate Chairman for Labour in September.

In January 2014 he hosted a hui attended by David Cunliffe on how Labour should win the Maori vote

Both Taurima and the other TVNZ staff who were active in Labour actively worked to keep their activities secret from TVNZ

Taurima was asked by the Herald on November if he was standing for Labour. He told them “categorically” he would not be standing and told his TVNZ boss abotu the denial and the media speculation on him (based on a tweet from Julian Wilcox) was “mud-raking”. As it happens, the speculation was entirely correct and Taurima deceived when he ruled out standing.

As I said above, the setting up of multiple branches is a very strong indicator of a desire to be the candidate. The very small period of time between returning to TVNZ and preparing the way for his candidacy is, in my opinion, proof of very bad faith on the part of Taurima.

Now it will get interesting. Presumably Julian Wilcox will enter the race. I rate Wilcox based on his skills as the former host of Native Affairs on Maori TV. However I do wonder what, if anything, a well targeted Official Information Act request to Maori TV may turn up regarding the Labour Party! Hopefully Julian kept his Labour Party involvement (he was a member last year) away from his work!

Meanwhile the PSA is campaigning for the rights of TVNZ political journalists to be activists within a political party. Not the finest moment for the PSA who should be supporting political neutrality.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2014 at 9:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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72 Responses to “The Taurima report”

This PSA stance shows that we should have no conscience when tipping these deadbeat unionist drones out of their oversalaried, bludging, unnecessary jobs. I stated yesterday that it gave one the shits dodging these PSA sloths when negotiating Featherston/Lambton Quay areas during weekdays, as they snailwalked along the streets, slithered into doorways smoking, and generally made nuisances of themselves. But of course, these drones paid PSA subs, feathering Labour coffers via capitation fees. Dump as many of these leeches as possible JK.

Absolutely the right decision by the Labour Party, which is of course somewhat surprising that they did it. I half expected them to approve his candidacy anyway & explain it away in some half-assed way. It would have been open slather in Parliament around misuse of political funds, and how Labour was not fit to rule.

Now watch Taurima get some cushy Maori trust role, quietly appointed some time in coming weeks.

Labour’s New Zealand Council, the Party’s ruling body, met last night and declined to grant a waiver to Shane Taurima, meaning that his nomination for Labour’s candidacy in the Tamaki Makaurau seat cannot proceed.

Mr Taurima required a waiver in order for his nomination to be accepted, as he had been a member of the Party for less than one year when nominations for the candidacy opened.

@ WineOh – I would suggest it’ll be more likely that his name will suddenly appear when Labour’s Party List is released; he will be deemed to have been rehabilitated, and all will be forgiven. In the meantime, I am sure there’ll be a job for him in the War Room.

➡ One staff member said she found it hard to complete her TVNZ duties due to the requests from Taurima to do Labour Party business

➡ Taxpayers, through TVNZ, paid for someone to fly from Gisborne to Auckland to attend a Labour Party meeting at Taurma’s home

Those two items would be the core problem though, right? Spending TVNZ money on the Labour Party.

And now that he’s been caught, the Labour Party are of course distancing themselves from any of this. It was all the doing of this dodgy candidate who they no longer approve of. No honour among thieves.

My questions:
Why isn’t this theft as a servant?
How can he believe he is ‘vindicated’?
Why has Labour left the door open when he has clearly lied?
Why didn’t David Cunliffe know what was going on? Surely someone did and should have told him – unless he already knew.

I half pie expected Labour to not only shoot themselves in the foot over this but possibly lie under an advancing tank as well. They take the advantage of advancing the case of ‘perception’ of wrong doing as being important in the public mind. I think JK would have had the faintest hope that the seldom nimble footed, Labour machine, would have walked into a trap here and the Collins issue would have been over and the even the election won. Maybe Cunliffe is settling into his work.

But but but I thought this was all OK when the left do it? Only people like Collins and Williamson can do bad things.
Labour are not being consistent – Shane can not run for Tamaki Makaurau because it would look like a conflict of interest – how sad

TVNZ management got off rather lightly. They must have known that Taurima still had political ambitions but chose to ignore them. But this report carefully avoided going there. They placed everything on to Taurima who is the party at fault. A Senior Manager does not need guidelines they are expected to exercise judgement. Guidelines are way below Taurina’s pay grade. On balance it is fair enough. Taurima is a talented broadcaster he will pop up somewhere else. But he lacks the judgement and maturity to be Management.

Good on Labour for throwing the corrupt scumbag under a bus. But when are they going to compensate TVNZ for the staff time, facilities, and travel that they consumed? Surely four TVNZ staff working for Labour for a year means that there is something around $800k owing.

Taurima, whose actions were clearly dishonest and duplicitous, has been made a convenient scapegoat. TVNZ will now avoid scrutiny that it is so hopelessly biased that they either turned a blind eye to Taurima’s activities or that it is so incompetent that it can’t investigate a person’s assertions to neutrality when in this case, they were clearly misleading assertions. TVNZ can just blame it all on Taurima’s sneakiness and overarching ambition.

Likewise Labour, sensing with Sharples departure that Tamaki Makaurau is there’s for the taking, can now jettison their once rising star as too tainted. I’m sure we’ll be hearing spin like “we had no idea he was doing this” and “we cannot accept a candidate who pays lip service to the political neutrality of TVNZ” yadayadyada. Cunliffe would’ve known but find me a mainstream journalist who’ll press him on this issue and I’ll show you a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. After a few days, left leaning commentators can just say nothing to see here, move along.

TVNZ’s reputation for neutrality will take a small hit and nowhere near as big a hit as it should given that it has become such an incubator of Labour party candidates.

They think we are all as stupid as their members who are stupid enough to believe the union works in their best interests when it’s blatantly obvious that they server the best interests of the Labour party and their own membership numbers well ahead of the interests of the union sub paying workers.

KIA>Likewise Labour, sensing with Sharples departure that Tamaki Makaurau is there’s for the taking, can now jettison their once rising star as too tainted.

Ironically, it is much better for National if Labour pick up some or all of the seats currently held by the Maori Party. It reduces the overhang and therefore the number of seats needed for a majority. If the Maori Party were tightly bound to National then the overhang would be good, but they could go with either party.

The PSA is a voluntary association that does work in the best interests of its members. It’s pretty hard for it not to, when it is actually run by members.

Really, the best interests of it’s members is to allow them to break the code of conduct required by public service employers … OK .. Yes – special friends of Labour don’t need to follow the law – we see this from the head of the party down don’t we.

davidp
Labour were incensed that the Maori Party went with National – with Clark it was personal with Tariana Turia leaving her cabinet, quitting her seat, forcing the by-election that she won and forming the MP. Regardless of the electoral consequences of reducing (or likely eliminating) the overhang, Labour have wanted to destroy the MP and take back all the Maori seats that they see as their historical preserve.

Bullshit ! Lets see them campaingn for the rights of ACT or National etc. How stupid do they think we are.

<sarcasm>As we speak the PSA are fighting to get the BRT allowed free access to public service workplaces. They are most interested in the workers rights and options and have declared that their own membership numbers are less important than workers rights. </sarcasm>

Read the PSA magazine. Its all about angry middle aged womin, gays/transgender, Maori and Paskifica people. Nothing against those folk, but the way I see it they all want the same thing as everyone else. Decent pay and working conditions.

The PSA not only promotes Labour, but actively misuses members money to implement Labour policy by stealth.

Actually worth mentioning that I was surprised at how heavily involved he was in campaigning during his stint back at TVNZ and how quickly it happened after joining. The detail in the report is pretty damning, and should be worth a great deal more scorn than the media reports are reporting it. In fact the headline on the Stuff website was something like “Report Clears Taurima of political bias” rather than highlighting the extent of his offending. Even now the headline reads “Taurima political career stalls.”

Anybody in the private sector who was caught using their position for personal and/or political gain would be immediately terminated. Had this happened with a National Party candidate in a major NZ business it would have been front page scandal. The double standards and hypocrisy are staggering.

Edit- Stuff have already bumped it off the top of the political headline list with another empty threat by Peters against Collins. Disgraceful stuff.

That’s not what they said though. The PSA’s position is that public servants should enjoy the same political rights as every other New Zealander. Funnily enough, that is the position of the State Services Commission as well. TVNZ seem to want to impose some stricter criteria, and I’m not sure that is warranted simply in response to Taurima’s misdemeanours.

The PSA has was hijacked by left wing activists many, many years ago. Back when it was compulsory, I was elected as a union rep, but we couldn’t get warm clothing for staff supervising work on Mangere Bridge, because the union hierarchy was to busy rabbiting on about H Block (IRA prisoners) and the PSIS Travel Agency using posters to promote Tourism to South Africa.

“The PSA’s position is that public servants should enjoy the same political rights as every other New Zealander.”

The PSA is a union, so their opinion is that of any Left wing organisation.

Public servants should not enjoy the same rights as all other New Zealanders. The civil service must be politically neutral. Having an opinion and voting is one thing, but being an activist in a party means that neutrality is, at the least, suspect.

It is highly unlikely that the Taurima case is an isolated one. There is far to much political bias in state funded media as it is. Making it open slather, which is what your’e effectively advocating, would not be good for democracy.

At the same time National needs to man up and sell all state owned media. That would help.

You are (deliberately) misunderstanding the position. The union is not politically partisan. It can’t do so and still effectively represent public servants.
The State Services Commission require public servants to ‘keep politics out of their jobs and keep their jobs out of politics’. At the same time, the SSC explicitly recognises that public servants enjoy the same political rights as all other New Zealanders. Taurima crossed the line. Banning public servants from joining political parties would cross a much more serious line.

Some senior public servants don’t even exercise their right to vote. Circumstances should determine cases.

It’s interesting to note that the sharp demise in the unions was so tightly coupled with the end of compulsion.

Deliberately misunderstanding the position… no.

See in a stock standard public servant code of conduct there is a section on political neutrality. There are also scenarios to be played looking at the different roles and their actions with regard to the code of conduct. Typically these are done in meetings with a supervisor and possibly an HR representative if requested by either the staff or their management.

Now it’s typically forbidden to be involved in a political march, protest or other activity if you are in any way deliberately identifying yourself with, or are readily identifiable with, your employer. Special attention is paid to reminding people that they may be being filmed and their actions may reflect badly on the government of the day etc. However the exception is union related activities where you are identifying yourself with the union. Under this banner you can march on parliament, do what the hell you like pretty much.

It’s dull times for public servant political activists when Labour are in power, much more angry and militant when National are in office. IMHO the PSA is disgracefully partisan at the ‘on the floor level’ in the public service. I challenge any public servant to go along to 4 consecutive PSA meetings strongly lobbying for the National Party.

Why would anyone go along to PSA meetings to lobby for the National Party? Partisan lobbying is not what the PSA is for.
And nowhere is your reference does it say that membership of the PSA was compulsory. Maybe coz it wasn’t.

And nowhere is your reference does it say that membership of the PSA was compulsory.

Belonging to a union was compulsory (under employment law) if you earned under [xyz] amount through till 1991. The threshold was quite low, for example in 1986 my earning crept above that threshold at about $16K/year. Ironic that you were only ‘required’ to fund the union irrespective of your own views if you were a low earner. The PSA would have collected thousands of members under that legislation.

With the election of the first Labour Government in 1935, this Act was amended so that union membership effectively became compulsory in 1936. Minimum wages were introduced with effect from 1 April 1946. Initially covering male and female workers aged 21 years and over, excluding some general classes such as apprentices, this age was reduced to 20 years in 1970. The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act 1936 also introduced the 40-hour working week (Szakats, 1988).

The next biggest change to employment law came when the fourth Labour Government introduced the Labour Relations Act in 1987 (Deeks, Parker and Ryan, 1994). This Act removed secondary bargaining5, encouraged collective agreements, and required registered unions to have a minimum of 1000 members. The Act, however, retained the 40-hour maximum working week for awards. Four years later, the National Government replaced the Labour Relations Act with the Employment Contracts Act. The Employment Contracts Act 1991 introduced three major changes: (a) effectively, the introduction of voluntary unionism; (b) the introduction of individual employment contracts; and (c) the extension of personal grievance procedures to non-union members.

‘From June 1936 compulsory union membership was introduced in the private sector. For its part the PSA…was happy to remain ‘purely voluntary and non-political’.’
– Alan Henderson, The Quest for Efficiency: The origins of the State Services Commission.

1950s
Membership climbed to 30,000. The PSA
rejected a government proposal to make
union membership compulsory

It’s unclear if …’rejected a government proposal…’ means they were successful or if as indicated by other links, and my own experience under NZ employment law, they benefited from historic compulsory unionism.